September 30, 2009

In tonight's episode of "Criminal Minds" Hodge took, his team agreed, an unnecessary risk. It turned out fine. But that's not the point. The point is that the Boston Reaper seems to be winning the battle of wits between the two.

In last week's episode the Boston Reaper put Hodge in the hospital with knife wounds that he knew the FBI agent would survive. His goal is to really get to Hodge through his divorced wife and son. As a result, Hodge had to put them in protective custody until the Boston Reaper is captured. That could be years. Meanwhile, Hodge is all alone in life and is being eaten up alive by that, plus causing such inconvenience to his former wife and son. She had just nailed a job and had to give it up. The son has to surrender everything that's familiar to him, including his father.

In this waiting game, Hodge could be the first to perish. He looks much more uptight than usual.

Smell the smugness. This place is a goner. That was my take on Reader's Digest Inc. way back in the late 1980s when I did copywriting for its global business. A nobody, they served me lunch in the executive dining room. The waiters wore white gloves. And one middle manager had a martini. I stuck to the Diet Coke and gawked.

My instincts were on the money. The corporation is not only in Chapter 11. It is laying off again. More cuts are expected. Scary: The company is considering, reports Hamilton Nolan at Gawker, farming out its whole web department. So much for getting an associate degree in web development.

Smug was never smart. The problem now in this volatile economy is that companies can't seem to figure out how to break out of that mindset. Perhaps I and my colleagues should develop an executive coaching service Hungry 101 and Advanced Hungry.

Hitting the speaking circuit is the Promised Land for most experts and leaders. The pay can be six-figures, along with nice accommodations and fawning. Sarah With-a-quick-eye-for-self-interest Palin had her eye on that. But it doesn't seem to be panning out.

According to an insider report to the NEW YORK POST, "The big lecture buyers in the U.S. are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot." However, she is doing a bit better outside the U.S.

Perhaps Palin can shout a speech for her back door to audiences in Russia.

Conde Nast is that oddball media shop in which each publication is autonomous. Therefore, the response to the McKinsey and Company study may vary from publisher to publisher. Some may begin laying off in October. Others may wait months.

In THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, John Koblin reports that the lion's share of workers at Conde Nast feel this ordeal of the ax hanging over them has gone on long enough. They now want to get the lay offs over with.

When that happens Manhattan will be even more bloated with jobless writers, editors, and graphics folks.

Perhaps it reassured some at CQ-ROLL CALL that the managing director Laurie Battaglia told Politico reporter Michael Calderone that there wouldn't be any more layoffs. Last week, Calderone tells us that 44 staffers got the ax and then this week the long-time editor Brian Nutting also was let go.

But "no more layoffs" is not what in-touch communicators want or need to hear. They know the score. It's now a Black Swan economy in which unexpected developments become the norm and those developments have game-changing impacts. Financial-markets expert Nassim Taleb published a book with that title in 2007. Many were dubious of this "theory." Not too many are now.

Isn't it more reassuring to a workforce for leadership and management to demonstrate they're facing reality by saying: We don't know what will happen so we can't predict hiring or layoffs. In essence, the new economy has made us all day laborers.

Fiction comes from the unconscious. And the unconscious, I am now convinced after finishing my first novel, is a boiling pot of memories, parts of people, compulsions and evil.

Once the book is started, there's no shutting off the pot or even lowering the flame, at least not until the story gets an ending. A spell is cast.

The characters weren't who I planned for them to be and didn't do or have done to them what would have made for a medieval type morality tale. They stepped right over me, showed their own unique selves and how unfair life can be to the naive, immature, and wounded. They were there pressing up against me as I worked on ghostwriting [no pun intended] assignments, marketed for new business, watched TV, and tried to sleep. After four false starts, I gave in and gave them their way.

Let's hope they had something worthwhile to give us. The novel - "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" - will be published in late fall. You can look for it online at all the majors such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Meanwhile here's a complimentary peek at the first chapter Download FatGuyFromGreenwich.

Here's a lesson for us creatives: Choose the right subject to focus on and render it in the right tone. Not every essay or novel or video is of the same value in the marketplace.

Not only is Michael Moore going to make a bundle on "Capitalism: A Love Story." He's likely to be sainted. His agent Ari Emanuel is the brother of President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And the agent, reports Kiki Ryan of Politico.com, said there's a good possibility that there might be a White House screening of the film. In addition, the Inside the Beltway crowd flocked to last night's opening.

Given Moore's shrewdness he's savvy enough to remove the baseball cap before greeting the President of the United States.

September 29, 2009

The euphoria of successfully returning to work is over for Alicia. Tonight she lost a case. In addition, she listened to her husband and the prostitute on tape. And she found out that his avocation could have run $3000 an hour. That's an incredible amount of money for a public servant. In addition, his mother, who is in the loop, is meddlesome.

An obvious question is: Will Alicia continue to be the good wife or decide to distance herself from her husband? There's no compelling reason for her to stick by him. Sure the two children love and need him but those relationships are separate from hers with him.

Things have always been difficult for writers to earn a good living. With the glut generated by layoffs in print media, it's gotten far worse. Expect even more obstacles when Conde Nast cuts loose those McKinsey and Company advised the company weren't contributing toward profitability.

Penelope Trunk put that in, well, writing, and in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. In that article dealing with taking risks to boost a career, Trunk opines, "This world isn't set up for writers to get anywhere." So, she made her own opportunity by establishing a web startup Brazen Careerist. It put her in massive debt and deep-sixed her marriage but it seems to be working out just fine. Trunk is now a communicator headed for the very big time.

After years of being The Good Girl Writer for corporate executives and conservative causes, I noticed that, hey, that plain-vanilla persona and delivering The Establishment's party line weren't pulling in the big bucks, at least not for me. Like most writers, I lacked and lack those top-tier contacts who distribute the lucrative plum assignments to friends and relatives. With the bloated ranks of writers just like me, I had to do something and that something had to be whatever it would take to have me stand out.

So far, so good. My personal brand and copy now reflect fierce intelligence, irony, and grassroots anger. Yes, that is bringing in a new kind of client.

In addition, I took a stab at fiction. So far so good there too. My first novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" is getting the kind of attention which generates new business. There are requests for everything from coaching to copyediting to mau-mauing. Here is the first chapter, for you to take a free peekeroo Download FatGuyFromGreenwich. It will be published late fall and listed online with all the biggies like Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.

There's more. There are those who aren't wealthy but can pay a fair price and on time. They need a writer with intelligence and the judgment to discern when the party line won't fly. Increasingly, they're using my services.

Opining: People with the real money don't share it or influence/power with those w/o the real money. Prune networks of folks who promise and don't deliver.

It's all about influence. Not prestige. Not even profitability. So, those with a message about changing the game are likely to want to be in Politico.com, not THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, as is Philip K. Howard today. Howard's rant is against the plaintiff bar. No surprise, its tone is preachy and corporatese, its content too much. In new media, we select the documentation which has the most weight and leave the rest on glaze-over-ville.

Nothing wrong about having an op-ed in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Some leaders, who are out-of-touch, would see that as a plus. That might even give them access to being a guest on those Sunday morning talk shows that no one cares about any more.

Most, though, would opt for having their message in Politico.com. There it will be heard and resonate through the media, both new and old.